About Me

[in a cabin in the mountains, Jim wakes up and bangs his head on the table he was sleeping under]
Alex Rieger: Jim, are you alright?
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: Yeah...uh ... who are you?
Alex Rieger: I'm Alex. We're friends, we work together.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: What? are we, lumberjacks?
Alex Rieger: No, we're cabdrivers.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: I bet we don't do much business up here!

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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Precious few Halloweeners this time. Now what will I do with all this candy? Hmm?

I like it better when I run out of candy early. Then I switch to fruit, then trail mix, then cans of diced tomatoes, and then cans of okra. I used to give out the okra first, just because I don't like the stuff and somehow cans keep showing up in my pantry. But I noticed I could never get rid of it all. I would clear the shelves, but the next day there'd be 4 or 5 cans sitting there. It's almost certainly the lumberwife, messing with my head.

Remember way back when? There used to be thousands of trick-or-treaters; they'd come down like candy loving locusts. Then you really would run out of stuff to give. We even went to pennies sometimes. That is low. When a kid is expecting candy, and you give him six or seven pennies, you may as well give him a kitchen knife as well so he can scratch your car on his way out.

I think we even gave out throw pillows one year, possibly even the TV remote.

When I was young I studied the economics of the traveling carnival. How much does that Guess-Your-Weight guy make per day? Does anybody really ever win the ring toss? It's called Carney capitalism. (ok, I lied)

IRVINE - An Irvine resident is requesting on behalf of an animal rights group that the city install a sign to memorialize hundreds of fish killed in a traffic crash in early October while being taken to Irvine Ranch Market.

Writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Dina Kourda is asking the city's street maintenance superintendent to place the sign at the crash site at Walnut and Yale avenues. Designed to remind big rig operators of their responsibility, it would read: "In memory of hundreds of fish who suffered and died at this spot."

What about the ongoing carnage that occurs in the world's streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, and oceans? What about the number one killer of fish, i.e. bigger fish?

Monday, October 29, 2012

When you pretend to spend your days felling trees and skidding them down the mountain, you get used to bad weather. Rain, lightning, and limited access to Starbucks are just things you have to pretend to live with. So I wasn't much worried when I heard about Sandy.

Still, I did what was recommended: Filled the bathtub with water, in case a tree crashed into the house and I wanted to take a bath before going out to inspect it. Made sure we had lots of batteries in case the power went out and I wanted to throw batteries at the dogs in the dark. Wrapped the mail box in tinfoil; which will do no good, but it's fun to do to see if your neighbors will assume it's important and follow suit. (it takes a few storms for them to get the idea but once the first neighbor gets on board the whole thing snowballs - pretty soon the neighbor wives are hectoring the hubbies, "come on, there's a storm coming and you haven't even wrapped the mailbox yet.")

Which, storm hijinks, reminds me of something we did 30 years back... We lived in an area that lost power every time a sparrow passed gas. So we got used to having candles at the ready. Well one power outage happened just hours after I came home with a years supply of batteries and a new 5-D-cell Kel light. So I load up the light and turn it on. And Bam! the flashlight actually recoiled in my hands from the large volume of photons screaming out of the other end.

See, the Kel Light started out as a law enforcement tool. The idea was that you could wield it as a baton if the need arose. But police quickly learned that its real value lay in its ability to lobotomize with light. Look right into the business end of a Kel Light with fresh batteries and you won't see anything but white until your next birthday. And no use closing you eyes; the Kel Light can burn right through eyelids.

Anyway the lumberwife's sister lived three houses down from us so I loaded up all available flashlights and aimed them at the windows. The house not only looked like it still had power, it looked like it might possibly have a UFO parked in the living room.

Anyway, when the whole place was illuminated I put on a pair of sunglasses and called the in-laws. "Hey, did your lights just flicker?" I says, "I sure hope we don't lose power again."

"What you mean? The power has been out for the last hour."

So I feigned amazement and proceeded to tell the in-laws about all the appliances that were running just fine at our house. "Oh yeah, you want to store anything in our fridge? It seems unfair that we're the only ones with lights..."

For about five minutes I had them completely convinced that the laws of electrical transmission didn't apply at my house. It was great fun. Well, until the Kel Light set the drapes on fire from across the room.

Ah, good times.

Have a safe storm everyone. Lumberbrudi sent me this, heed its warning:

Friday, October 26, 2012

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

I heard Rush Limbaugh saying that Obama may just have not been engaged. Like, he just didn't care enough about what was happening.

That doesn't ring true for me. I think he was hugely engaged. I think he was playing the possible outcomes in his head, and he was frozen with fear that the wrong decision could sink his reelection. This is a president who waits to see how world events unfold before he jumps on what he thinks is the popular bandwagon.

At some point the president decided he could divert blame to an obscure Coptic "filmmaker." He may even have expected a small boost in popularity as the media helped him blame the disaster on Islamaphobes.

Obama thought he could lead from behind while Americans were getting killed. We'll never know, but a regular front-wise leader may have been able to save those brave Americans in Benghazi.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Sometimes I'll listen to Rush if I'm in the office after noon. Gotta go now but just wanted to comment: I just heard Rush talk about a C-130 gunship that may have been available for the attack in Benghazi, he said that the C-130's are great for crowd dispersal. I think the word should have been atomization, not dispersal.

Of course no military help, of any kind, was sent. Know what I think? I think Obama was too afraid to act. I think he freezes under pressure.

When it hits the fan, we need a commander in chief whose first thought isn't "what are the political implications of this decision?"

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

I'm beginning to wonder if President Obama is the guy we need in the White House for the next four years. Sure, with a name like "President Obama" you'd think he'd be a perfect fit. What's Romney's first name? Mitt? Excuse me, but I think "President" is a little more, uh, presidential.

But lately I wonder if maybe Romney would be a better choice. Let Obama rest now. Thank him profusely and let him get started on those memoirs.

Which would be the conservative dogs, and which would be the liberal? Here's a hint: the conservative dog did something besides barking for help. Also, conservative dogs aren't content to make noise until somebody else saves them.

Last hint: how many times do you have to tell liberals not to stand up in a canoe?

I have to admit that a small voice is telling me that this could have been staged. Could have been.

The campaign admits that President Obama was subdued in the first debate. He punched up the energy level some for the second debate, but the results weren't much better. So the campaign has turned to Hollywood for help. The President has been in contact with the brains behind the 1997 hit The Fifth Element, and word is there will be an exponential jump in energy for the final debate.

The Obama campaign has been hit with an epidemic of off-message-itis. First it was Bill Clinton: “Governor Romney’s argument is ‘we’re not fixed, so fire him and put me in.’ It is true, we’re not fixed. When President Obama looked into the eyes of that man who said in the debate, ‘I had so much hope four years ago and I don’t now,’ I thought he was going to cry because he knows that it’s not fixed.” The “it is true” part in reference to anything Romney is saying is not helpful to Obama’s everything-Romney-says-is-a-lie theme. It isn’t the worst thing Clinton has said (Romney’s “sterling business record” takes that prize), but when everything else is fraying this does not help.

Could Bill be damning with faint praise because Obama has told Hillary that she's going under the bus on the Benghazi attack? My guess is that Hillary knew she was going to be blamed, and she blunted future accusations by admitting her responsibility for the operation.

Anyway, the Clintons know how it works. Their very first Presidential scandal was handled by their throwing of Billy Dale under the bus. He's the White House Travel director who they had prosecuted because they got caught firing everyone and installing their cronies in the Travel Office.

(which, I was reminded of recently, when the pretend trigger of the Benghazi attack, the video maker, was marched past the media in the middle of the night and later jailed. Would he be in jail if it didn't help make Obama's fairy tale of Benghazi more believable? Once again, like Billy Dale, ruining a guy's life isn't a factor when making a plan to avoid presidential embarrassment)

OK, so while I've got you here, I may as well make my prediction regarding the coverage of the debate: Unless Obama shows in a diaper and a flaming turban, dancing around the stage and flinging thumb tacks at the town-hallers; the press will declare him a masterful winner. The thrill will be back up their legs, and it will be all over but for the voting. In fact, Chris Matthews will say, lets not even bother with the vote. We know who the winner is.

When you tell a deliberate bald face lie, it should make people wonder what other lies you're telling. Listen to Biden's sincerity. Then, don't ever believe another thing he says.

I saw a commercial yesterday claiming (paraphrased) that the Romney budget would cut a third of Medicare funding. I'll bet their source it the Ryan budget; the same budget that must, by definition, take current law into account. The current law is Obamacare, which cuts Medicare by 714 billion. So, the Obama campaign is pointing out an aspect of their own law and blaming Romney for it.

A team of researchers at Hiroshima University recently conducted a study where they showed university students pictures of baby animals before completing various tasks. What they found, in research published today, was that those who saw the baby animal pictures did more productive work after seeing those photographs – even more than those who saw a picture of an adult animal or a pleasant food.